


Three Times, One Time

by Babenclaw



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Aqua just wants to be Good Enough, F/M, Kingdom Hearts III
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22863754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Babenclaw/pseuds/Babenclaw
Summary: Three times Aqua stopped herself from saying something important, and one time she let her heart speak for her.
Relationships: Aqua/Terra (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 46
Collections: I'm With You - A Terraqua Fanzine





	Three Times, One Time

##  **_One_ **

Aqua had always been a self-reliant girl. She had to be, growing up alongside the likes of Terra, the exact kind of boy she had hated when she was younger, when he would chase her through the castle, pull her ponytail, and then laugh at her for crying. No weaknesses allowed. It would always be her against the world. Terra didn’t want her around, content to be the only child of his Master. Their Master, she supposed, though he felt more like a stranger and less like a teacher. 

Her fingers curled tighter around the hilt of her new sword, still unfamiliar, still too heavy. Her master had smiled when he’d seen it for the first time, told her that she would grow up to be a great mage one day, but right now she didn’t feel much like a mage. Standing across from Terra, watching him lift his own sword, a heavy blade of copper that showed its weight like sharpened fangs, she felt a lot like the scared, lonely girl she had been when she’d first been brought to her floating home.

She felt like she didn’t belong here. But she was determined. Determined to prove to herself, to her master, and to her reluctant companion that she was the right choice, that the blade in her too-tight grip had made the right decision in choosing to be hers.

Terra never felt this way. Terra had never felt unworthy of a single thing in his life. 

He was everything she wanted to be as a keyblade wielder. Strong, confident, determined. He moved through their practices with a grace so different from her own, not like a dancer but like a force of nature. Slow, but unshakeable. Like nothing in the world could stop him. 

She hated that.

He was so much better than her at all the things that mattered. He had a will of iron and a heart of gold. When she imagined the future, the far-away time of  _ later _ or  _ one day _ or  _ soon, Aqua, but not now _ , she imagined him, glowing with pride, taller and stronger, the Mark of Mastery shining from his heart, as he turned his back to her and strode away toward whatever the future held for Masters.

If only one of them were to become a master, Aqua was sure it would be Terra. Not that she could ever admit that to him. To tell him that would be to show weakness, to admit that she saw what they all knew, that he was the better of them both. So she bit her tongue and crossed blades with him, again and again, pushing against his strength with all her heart, always chasing after him, always the one to follow.

One day. One day, when they were older, when she had caught up to him, could stand beside him as equals, she would tell him all of the admiration she held for him in her heart. Not today, of course, when he would only taunt her for her honesty. But one day, when they were both grown. One day. 

##  **_Two_ **

“...Only Aqua has shown the Mark of Mastery.”

Emotions and hearts were complicated things. Aqua had always believed that. They were ineffable, things people spoke of with a reverence reserved for things they didn’t understand. How could anyone handle feeling two such different feelings at once?

Joy. This had been the one moment she had been working toward her whole life. Ever since Eraqus had brought her into his home, given her a family and a purpose, she had dreamed of standing before her master, her heart in her hands, and being found worthy in his eyes. She had imagined this moment so many times as a child, as she stared out at a blanket of worlds twinkling against an indigo sky. 

Despair. As many times as she had imagined this moment, daydreamed of finally being told she was deserving of her Keyblade, deserving of her powers and her skill, she had never imagined a time where she made it first. She didn’t know what kind of wielder she was without him by her side.

Her eyes drifted toward her side, taking in the way Terra’s whole body tensed like a bowstring threatening to snap. Her heart ached for him, tingeing her joy with sorrow. They were supposed to go together, if not hand in hand then side by side. What had Master Eraqus seen? What had he not seen? How could he have seen Terra’s performance, seen the heart and soul in his eyes, and still found him wanting?

When her Master finally dismissed them, Aqua wasn’t sure what to do. She felt like she should celebrate, and yet, how could she when her best friend had watched his own dreams be shattered?

“Terra,” she finally managed, a knot in her chest threatening to steal her breath. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

The rest of her words caught against the ache in her chest, right where her heart would be.  _ You deserved this. Not me. _

“I need to be alone,” Terra replied, pulling away from her. His shoulders curved tighter, pulled closer. He was withdrawing. Leaving her behind.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t supposed to walk away from her.

“Terra-” Aqua tried again. She wanted to reach out, to grab him by the shoulder. To tell him he deserved the honor, same as her. To tell him that there could never be any darkness in a heart like his, so full of light. To tell him she still believed in him.

But she didn’t.

She left her hand at her side and watched him walk away.

_ He never said congratulations. _

##  **_Three_ **

When they finally found each other again, when the three of them were rejoined under a cloudless blue sky, Aqua had never imagined it going like this.

In her mind, Terra listened. She spoke calmly, without any blame. Ventus agreed with Aqua, helped her take Terra gently by the hands, and lead him out of the city. In Aqua’s imagination, her family went home together, the way they were supposed to.

(In her mind, she spoke better. She hadn’t thrown out half-formed accusations, exposing the worry in her heart, twisting it into blame.)

The hatred in his voice when he told her that he was on his own rammed a knife into the concern winding its way around her heart, constricting it further. That was what it had to be, wasn’t it? Hatred. Terra only spoke that way of things he despised. Regardless of the way she felt, regardless of what she had seen and heard about him, she didn’t hate him. No, the feelings that were threatening to cut off her breath as she watched him turn his back, shoulders hunched, walking away with a purpose so final it made her ache were quite opposite from hate, though she was afraid to even think the word out loud.

“Terra, no,” she tried. “It’s not like that. The Master is just worried, please-”

_ Please don’t walk away from me again. _

But Terra didn’t listen. Why would he? Why should he listen to her when she couldn’t listen to her own heart?

Strength of heart, indeed. Her Master may have believed she deserved this title, but she felt less and less like a Master every passing moment. What kind of Master was she, watching her friends slip through her fingers like grains of sand in an hourglass? Walking away from her again and again.

Always the one to follow. Always the one left behind.  _ We were supposed to go together. _

“Terra!” she called after him. She hoped, futile though it may be, that he could hear the desperation in her voice, the way her throat closed off with fear.  _ Please don’t leave us, _ it whispered.  _ Don’t leave me behind. _

In her mind, when she asked him to come home, she said it with love.

##  One Time

Everything hurt.

It felt like no matter how hard she tried, how many steps she took, that there would be no end to Xehanort’s manipulations, to his efforts to ruin their lives in pursuit of a war she didn’t want to understand.

Her head was ringing, her pulse pounding behind her eyes, and if she had possessed the energy to feel worry, she would fear passing out or throwing up from being flung around so recklessly.

_ Our bonds. _

The chains around her ribs tightened, her lungs past protesting and halfway to simply giving up as she stared down at a face so intimately familiar it ached. He was right. The chains holding her so tightly, threatening to squeeze the life from her body… they were their bonds. The more desperately she wished for him to return to them, the tighter they seemed to grow. 

_ Terra.  _

_ How did this happen to us? _

He looked up at her with a smirk so alien it made her stomach churn. His eyes glowed amber in the desert light, as dead as the lifeless graveyard around them. She was faintly aware of Sora and Ven as they struggled with their chains, but her eyes were locked on him. 

_ I promised I would set things right. _

But she had failed. A million, billion, trillion steps through eternal darkness only to be stopped by the very thing that had kept her going for so many endless years.

Her eyes were dry as the chains dragged her and Ven up into the sky. There was no strength left in her to cry, not anymore. If this was her fate, then so be it. She would die before she shattered her bonds to Terra or Ven. Xehanort could not, would not take this from her. It belonged to her heart.

In the final moments before she was dropped to the earth, she only hoped that Terra, the real Terra, wherever he might be, could hear her. She closed her eyes.

_ I’m sorry, Terra. _

_ I love you. _

The chains holding her slackened, and she fell toward the shattered earth like a shooting star as the darkness threatening the edges of her vision took her. 

Aqua wasn’t sure how long she floated in the endless dark, her heart reaching out into the endless chasm around her. She knew Terra was here somewhere. She could sense their bond, the promises that tied him to her, to Ven, to them both. 

He belonged at her side. 

Partners.

_ Do you still have the same dream? _

Her dream had always been to go with him, to walk alongside him. To hold her head high and find herself an equal by his side, worthy of her place. 

“Terra?” she called into the darkness, ignoring the burn behind her eyes, the ache in her throat. She couldn’t come this far to fall. She wouldn’t go home without him. “Terra!” Her heart threatened to steal the breath from her lungs. 

“Please,” she sighed, listening to the way her voice wavered. A weak girl, alone in the dark. “Please. I love you. Don’t leave me here alone.” Her eyes hurt, but they were dry. She stared without seeing at the emptiness below her.  _ Always left behind. _

Just when she was about to give up hope, she saw it- or perhaps she just felt it. A faint glimmer in the distance, barely enough to be considered a shimmer. It was familiar, warm, like a summer day by the lake or late nights by the fire. It was like home.

Overwhelmed by everything, by the exhaustion in her bones, by the desperate desire to have the third member of her trio back again, by her want to just have everything be  _ over _ , Aqua called into the darkness. “Terra!”

The world around her exploded into brilliant light. Aqua felt its warmth, its comforting press. In the distance, the shimmer grew, solidifying into something more, something real, a human shape silhouetted by light against the blackness of their surroundings. Aqua knew that shape. She knew that man. The light from behind him became brighter as his shape drew nearer to her.

Aqua stifled a sob. After so long alone, walking the endless dark, carrying thoughts of him in her heart like a shield, here he was. Warm, present, alive.

“Terra.”

Terra smiled at her, and it was so much better than her memories, so much warmer, so much more real and she wanted to reach out and trace her fingers along the line of his jaw, just to be sure that he was real, that he was here. He caught her hand before she could get close, his fingers closing easily around her much smaller wrists.

His hands were warm.

She could see his eyes now, so blue it made her heart ache. “Aqua,” he sighed, and it sounded like coming home. “Thank you.”

And everything went white.

When Aqua awoke, she was still facedown, her mouth dry and throat aching from the sand she’d been breathing in. She coughed, rubbing the sand from her eyes and slowly pushing herself up onto her arms.

“Aqua! Ven!” she heard, followed by the sound of boots racing across the sand. She blinked the starlight out of her eyes.

He was there, across from her, his hair the familiar chocolate brown of her childhood. He had Ven in his arms, cradled gently as he looked down at her like he’d never seen the boy before.

She supposed, given the decade and a half of being trapped in his own heart, helpless to stop the man who had ruined their lives, that he hadn’t.

“Terra?” she breathed out, trying to drag her broken body a little closer. Was this a dream? Or a trick? Could she finally relax? “Is it... you?”

Terra looked up at her, and she gasped at finally getting to see those beautiful sea-blue eyes. The intensity froze her in place. She could see the tears welling at the corners of his eyes, spilling over and leaving wet tracks through the dirt and grime covering his face. She wanted to reach out, to wipe the tears away. 

It really was him.

He was home.

He gave her a smile, the smallest tilt of his lips, and Aqua felt it jolt through her entire body. She thought she would never get to see his smile again.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice barely a whisper against the wind surrounding them. She was shaking, she realized. The way he spoke, the softness in his voice, the tiny smile he offered through all their pain, all the years gone by. He had heard her, she knew, there in that darkness, calling out to him. “You never stopped… lighting my way back.”

The tears spilled freely at last, twelve years of exhaustion and loneliness, chasing shadows across empty darkness. She nodded, not bothering to wipe the tear tracks from her face. How she looked, the tears, none of it mattered. She had her family together again. 

Aqua would never be alone again.

When Terra pulled them into a hug, pressing them both into his shoulders and bowing his head to hide the way tears snaked their way down his face, Aqua quietly wished that he would never have to let go.

**Author's Note:**

> Being part of this zine was such a gift! Check the zine out if you get a chance- you can find us on Twitter at @TerraquaFanzine!


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